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Author Spotlight: Deciphering the Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms of Gesture in Communication
Published on: January 26, 2024
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The Morphogenesis of Speech Gestures: From Local Computations to Global Patterns.
1Department of Linguistics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
Frontiers in Psychology
|November 30, 2019
Summary
Speech gestures arise from microscopic vocal tract units forming spatiotemporal constrictions. This morphogenetic process, modeled by reaction-diffusion equations, explains phonological contrasts and observed speech dynamics.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Biophysics
- Mathematical Biology
Background:
- Speech gestures are characterized by spatial and temporal extension.
- Phonological contrasts are realized through vocal tract constrictions of finite duration.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explain the origin of spatiotemporal particulation in the vocal tract for linguistic signaling.
- To connect microscopic vocal tract dynamics to macroscopic speech gestures.
Main Methods:
- Modeling the vocal tract as topographically organized microscopic units.
- Utilizing reaction-diffusion equations with simultaneous Turing and Hopf patterns.
- Applying principles from mathematical physics and biology for morphogenetic processes.
Main Results:
- Demonstrated how local computations yield global spatiotemporal constrictions.
- Predicted specific properties of speech gestures, including constriction pivoting.
- Validated findings against observed intermediate values in speech dynamics (e.g., time to peak velocity).
Conclusions:
- Speech gestures emerge from a reaction-diffusion morphogenetic process.
- This framework contributes to understanding motor control as emergent low-dimensional descriptions from high-dimensional systems.
- The study provides a predictive dynamical model for speech gesture generation.
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